The Stone Crusher

by Jeremy Dronfield

  Gustav wore his finest suit; Fritz too, in schoolboy’s knickerbocker pants; Edith, Herta, and Tini in their smartest dresses; little Kurt in a sailor suit.

  In Hans Gemperle’s photography studio they gazed into the camera’s lens as if looking to their own futures. Edith seemed uneasy, and rested a hand on her mother’s shoulder. Kurt looked contented—at eight he understood little of what the changes in his world might mean—and Fritz displayed the nonchalant ease of a cocky teenager. Herta, just turning sixteen and a young woman already, was radiant. As Herr Gemperle (who was not a Jew and would thrive in the coming years) clicked his shutter, he caught Gustav’s apprehensiveness and the stoicism of Tini’s dark eyes. They knew something of the world, and perhaps they saw more clearly now where it was going, even the sanguine Gustav. It had been Tini’s will that had brought them to the studio. She had a foreboding that the family might not be together for much longer. She wanted to capture and preserve them like this, while there was still happiness.

  The poison was already on the streets, fomented by the SA; now it began to flow from the offices of government and justice.

  Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Austrian Jews were stripped of their citizenship. On April 4 Fritz and all his Jewish schoolfellows were expelled from the trade school; he also lost his work placement. Edith and Herta were fired from their jobs, and Gustav was no longer able to practice his trade. Along with many other Jewish businesses, his workshop was seized and locked up.

  People were warned not to buy from Jews; those who were caught doing so 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 19

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  20 V i e n n a

  were made to stand with a sign: “I am an Aryan, but a swine—I bought in this Jewish shop.”29

  One Saturday four weeks after the Anschluss,* Adolf Hitler returned to Vienna. He gave a speech at the huge Nordwest train station—which stood on the far side of the great Augarten public park, just a few hundred meters away from Im Werd—to a crowd of twenty thousand members of the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth. “I have shown through my life,” he thundered, “that I can do more than those dwarfs who ruled this country into ruin. In a hundred years’

  time my name will stand as that of the great son of this country.”30 Providence, he declared, had made him leader of the Reich, and he called on all Germans to hold it in their fists. The crowd exploded into a storm of “Sieg heil!” repeated over and over, ear‑splitting, echoing over Leopoldstadt.

  Officially this was a day of thanksgiving for Greater Germany, and Hitler’s speech was broadcast across the whole Reich. Vienna was decked with swasti‑

  kas, every newspaper filled with pictures glorifying the Führer. The next day Austria would at last have its long‑awaited vote, and once again citizens were being exhorted to vote Yes—not for independence but to affirm the Anschluss and Hitler’s rule. Jews, of course, were barred from voting. The ballot was firmly controlled and closely monitored by the SS, and to nobody’s surprise the result was 99.7 percent in favor. Hitler remarked that the result “surpassed all my expectations.”31 The bells of Protestant churches across the city rang for fifteen long minutes, and the head of the Evangelical Church ordered services of thanksgiving. The Catholics remained silent, not yet certain if the Führer meant to deal them Jews’ wages.32

  Encouraged by the result, the Nazis tightened their hold. Foreign news‑

  papers were banned. Swastika lapel pins began to appear everywhere, and suspicion fell on any man or woman not wearing one; it became known as the “safety pin.”33 In all schools, the heil Hitler salute became part of daily routine after morning prayers. Jews were expelled from universities and most elementary schools, Jewish businesses were seized and transferred to Aryan ownership, there were ritual book‑burnings, and the SS took over the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, the Jewish cultural and religious affairs center near the Stadttempel, humiliating and baiting the rabbis and other officials who staffed it.34 From now on the IKG would become the govern‑

  * Lit. joining; the forcible unification of Austria with Germany 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 20

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  “ W h e n J e w i s h B l o o d D r i p s f r o m t h e K n i f e . . . ” 21

  ment organ through which the “Jewish problem” was handled, and it would have to pay “compensation” to the state for permission to occupy its own premises.35 The regime seized Jewish property worth a total of two and a quarter billion Reichsmarks (not including houses and apartments, which would be taken in time).36

  Gustav and Tini struggled to hold their family together. Gustav had a few good Aryan friends in the upholstery trade who gave him employment in their workshops, but it was infrequent. During the summer, Fritz and his mother managed to get work from the owner of the Lower Austrian Dairy, delivering milk in the neighboring district—it was only possible because the delivery round was early in the morning and the customers wouldn’t know that their milk was being brought by Jews. They earned two pfennigs for each liter they delivered, making up to one mark a day—starvation wages. The family subsisted on meals from the Jewish soup kitchen along the street.

  Nazism spread itself everywhere; there was no escaping its touch. Groups of brown‑shirted storm troopers and Hitler Youth marched in the streets singing: Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt,

  Dann singen wir und lachen.

  “When Jewish blood drips from the knife, then we sing and laugh.” Their songs extolled the hanging of Jews and putting Catholic priests against the wall.

  Some of the singers were old friends of Fritz’s. The local SS unit, the 89th Stan‑

  darte, also had familiar faces in its ranks. They were everywhere, demanding identification from passing citizens, proud and pleased in their crisp uniforms and unalloyed power. It infected everything. The word Saujud—Jew‑pig—was heard everywhere. Signs saying “Aryans only” appeared on park benches. Fritz and his remaining friends were barred from playing on sports grounds or using swimming pools—which struck Fritz hard, because he loved to swim.

  As summer progressed, the violence against Jews subsided but official sanctions went on, and beneath the surface a pressure was building. A name began to be heard, a name replete with fear. “Keep your head down and your mouth shut,” said Jews to one another, “or you will go to Dachau.” People began to disappear: prominent figures first, politicians and businessmen, then they began to take able‑bodied men. Sometimes they were delivered back to their families in ashes. Then another name began to be whispered: Buchenwald.

  294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 21

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  22 V i e n n a

  The Konzentrationslagern—concentration camps—which had been a feature of Nazi Germany since the beginning, were multiplying.37

  The persecution of the Jews was becoming thoroughly systematized, bureaucratized. Their identities were a matter of special attention. In August it was decreed that if they didn’t already have recognized Hebraic first names, they had to take new middle names: “Israel” for men, “Sara” for women.38 And each person’s identity card had to be stamped with a J—the Juden-Kennkarte, or J-Karte as they called it. In Leopoldstadt, a special procedure was employed.

  The cardholder, having had their card stamped, was taken into a room with a photographer and several male and female assistants. After being photographed, head and shoulders, from all sides, they were made to strip naked. “Despite their utmost reluctance,” one witness recorded, “people had to undress completely before all these men and women in order to be taken again from all sides.” They were fingerprinted and measured, “during which the men obviously measured the women, hair strength was measured, blood samples taken and everything written down and enumerated.”39 Every Jew was required to go through this degradation, without exception. Some bolted as soon as they got their cards stamped, so the SS began doing the photography before stamping the cards.

  By September the situation in Vienna was quiet, a
nd a semblance of normal life began to resume, even for Jews within their communities.40

  But the Nazis were far from content with what they had done against the Jews; what was needed was a spur to push the people to the next level of Jew‑hatred. In October an incident occurred in Belgium that foreshadowed what was to come. The port city of Antwerp had a large and prosperous Jew‑

  ish quarter, with a particularly thriving diamond trade. On October 26, 1938, two journalists from the Nazi propaganda paper Der Angriff came ashore from a passenger steamer and began taking photographs of the Jewish diamond exchange. They behaved in an intrusive and offensive manner, and several Jews reacted angrily; they tried to eject the journalists, and there was a scuffle.

  One of the Germans was hurt and their camera taken. The police dispersed the crowd and two Jews were arrested.41 In the German press the incident was magnified to a Jewish outrage against innocent and helpless German citizens.

  According to Vienna’s Neues Wiener Tagblatt, a small party of German tourists had, without provocation, been set upon by a gang of fifty Jewish thugs, beaten bloody, and had their property stolen from them as they lay unconscious. “A large part of the Belgian press is silent,” the paper fumed. “This attitude is 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 22

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  “ W h e n J e w i s h B l o o d D r i p s f r o m t h e K n i f e . . . ” 23

  indicative of the inadequacy of these papers, which are not afraid to make a fuss when a single Jew is held accountable for his crimes.”42 The Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter issued a dire warning that any further acts of Jewish violence against Germans “could easily have consequences beyond their sphere of influence, which might be extremely undesirable and unpleasant for both individual Jews and Jewry as a whole.”43

  The threat was clear and tensions high.

  As November began, anti‑Semitic feelings in Vienna and all across the Nazi Reich were looking for an outlet. The trigger was pulled far away in Paris, when a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, in a blaze of rage over the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany—including his own family—took a new‑bought revolver into the German Embassy. Looking to kill the ambassador, instead he fired five bullets into Ernst vom Rath, an official chosen at random.

  In Vienna the newspapers called the assassination an “outrageous provoca‑

  tion of the German people.”44 The Jews must be taught a lesson.

  Vom Rath lingered for two days in the hospital before dying on Wednes‑

  day, November 9. That night, the Nazis came out in force on the streets of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Salzburg, Vienna, and every other town and city. Local party officials and the Gestapo were the masters of ceremonies, and under their lead came the SA and the SS, armed with sledgehammers, axes, and combustibles. The targets were homes and businesses still in Jewish hands. Jews were beaten and murdered out of hand if they got in the way.

  The storm troopers tore down and burned wherever they could, but it was the shattering of glass that onlookers remembered most vividly; the sound of it was the dominant theme of the night. The Germans called it Kristallnacht, night of crystal glass, for the glittering shards that carpeted the sidewalks.45

  The Jews would remember it as the November pogrom.

  The general order was that there was to be no looting, only destruction.46

  The orders were strict, but in the chaos that ensued they were broken many times over, with Jewish homes and businesses robbed under cover of search‑

  ing for weapons and “illegal literature.”47Homes were invaded, possessions broken, furnishings and clothes slashed and torn by brown‑shirted men; moth‑

  ers shielded their terrified children close and couples clung to each other in petrified despair as their homes were violated around them.

  In Leopoldstadt, Jews caught out of doors were driven into the Karmeli‑

  termarkt and beaten. After midnight the city’s synagogues were set ablaze, and 294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 23

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  24 V i e n n a

  the rooftops within sight of the Kleinmanns’ apartment glowed orange, illumi‑

  nated by the flames of the Polnische Schul, the synagogue in Leopoldsgasse.

  The fire brigade turned out, but the storm troopers barred them from fighting the fire until the magnificent building had been completely consumed. In the city center, the Stadttempel, which couldn’t be burned because it adjoined other buildings, was gutted instead; its gorgeous carvings, fittings, and beautiful gold and white paintwork were smashed and violated, the ark and the bimah thrown down and broken.

  Then, before dawn, the arrests began. Jews in their thousands, mostly able‑bodied men, were seized on the streets or dragged from their homes by the storm troopers.

  Among the first taken were Gustav and Fritz Kleinmann.

  294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 24

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  2 Traitors to the

  P e o p l e

  THEY WERE TAKEN TO the district police headquarters in Ausstel‑

  lungsstrasse, an imposing building of red brick and ashlar near the Prater public park.1 The Kleinmann family had spent many a holiday afternoon in the Prater, in the acres of green parkland, in the beer garden, the children delight‑

  ing in the slide, the bathing pools, the rides and sideshows of the funfair. Now, in the gloomy winter morning, the gates were still and the steel spiderweb of the Riesenrad ferris wheel loomed over the rooftops like a threat. Gustav and Fritz passed by the park entrance without seeing it, in a truck packed with other Jewish men from Leopoldstadt.

  Father and son had been given up to the storm troopers by their own neighbors: by men who had been Gustav’s close friends, Du-Freunden*, men he had chatted to, smiled at, known and trusted, who knew his children and his life story. Yet without coercion or provocation they had pushed him over the cliff.

  The police station had some disused stables, and the prisoners were herded into one of the larger buildings.2 There were hundreds of men and women in there already. The arrests had swept the city like a flash flood. Most were taken from their homes like Gustav and Fritz; hundreds more were seized the next morning while lining up outside the embassies and consulates of foreign nations, seeking escape; others had been snatched randomly off the streets.3

  * Friends close enough to call one another du, the intimate form of “you,” rather than the formal Sie

  25

  294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 25

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  26 V i e n n a

  The barked question: “Jude oder Nichtjude? ”* And if the answer was “Jude,”

  or if the victim’s appearance even hinted at it—into the back of the truck.

  Some were marched through the streets, abused and assaulted by crowds. The Nazis called it the Volksstimme—the voice of the people. It howled through the streets with a sound of sirens, and in the light of dawn it went on and on, a nightmare from which there would now be no waking.

  Six and a half thousand Jews—mostly men—had been taken to police stations across the city, and none was fuller than the one by the Prater.4 The cells had overflowed with the first arrivals, and now people were crammed so tightly in the stable building they had to stand with hands raised; some were made to kneel so that newcomers could crawl over them.

  Gustav and Fritz stuck together in the press. The hours wore by as they stood or knelt, hungry, thirsty, joints aching, surrounded by muttering and groans and prayers. From out in the yard, leaking through the walls and around the rafters, came the jeering and the sounds of beatings. Every few minutes, two or three people would be called from the room for interrogation. None came back.

  Fritz and his father didn’t know how many hours they had been there when at last the finger pointed at them and they struggled through the mass of bodies to the door. They were seized and marched to another building, into the presence of a panel of officials. The interrogation
, like every contact with the SA and SS, was held together by a glue of insults— Saujud, Volksverräter, jüdische Verbrecher . . . Jew‑pig, traitor to the people, Jewish criminal. Each prisoner was forced to identify with these calumnies, to own them and accept them. And the questions were the same for every man: How much money have you in savings? Are you a homosexual? Are you in a relationship with an Aryan woman? Have you ever helped to perform an abortion? What associations and parties are you a member of?

  Following interrogation and review, the prisoners were assigned to catego‑

  ries. Those labeled Zurück (return) were put back into confinement to await further processing. The ones marked as Entlassung (dismissal) were released, mostly foreigners arrested by mistake, women, the elderly, and adolescents.

  The category every man dreaded to hear was Tauglich (able‑bodied), because

  * “Jew or non‑Jew?”

  294265XGB_STONE_CS6_PC.indd 26

  05/04/2018 14:02:04

  T r a i t o r s t o t h e P e o p l e 27

  they guessed that this meant Dachau. Or Buchenwald, or the new name that was being whispered: Mauthausen, a camp they were building in Austria itself.5

  While they waited for their verdicts, the interrogated were put in a mez‑

  zanine room overlooking the yard. Here Gustav and Fritz could see the source of the noises they had heard. The men outside had been forced into packed ranks with their hands raised, lambasted and abused by SA and SS storm troopers armed with sticks and whips. They were made to lie down, stand up, roll around, whipped, kicked, laughed at, their coats and smart suits smeared with dirt, their hats trampled on the ground. Some were singled out for severe beatings. Those not taking part in the “gymnastics” were made to chant “We are Jewish criminals! We are Jew‑pigs!”

  Throughout this, the Schutzpolizei, the regular police, men of long service who knew the Jewish folk of Leopoldstadt, many of them as friends, stood by, assisting as required, as they had ever since the persecutions began. Although most behaved with restraint and few participated in the abuse, neither did any resist it. At least one senior policeman joined in with the beatings in the courtyard, although his men did not.6